Asia Pacific Breweries (APB) Foundation Signature Art Prize 2018

The conceptual and visual core of Bae Young-whan's work is the motion of the human body, which here dances and gyrates along to a percussive beat, representing a contemporary take on traditional rituals. The movement of the body here is not merely indebted to older dance forms, but also, according to the artist, fuelled by the simple fact of 'spiritual excitement', with sheer emotion driving the vigour and power of the dance.

Brand is a series of wall panels crafted from the leather of the grunting ox, a species native to the Central Asia highlands. The age-old practice of branding cattle was modernised during the Soviet period, when the convention of marking animals with their owners’ coats-of-arms was replaced by the use of numbers. The work juxtaposes two seemingly simple techniques – the use of natural materials from the region, and numeric symbols. Brand also recalls darker connotations. The scars on the hides remind the artist of a man he met in Berlin, whose hands were mutilated as the probable result of Nazi tattooing.

The Kris Project takes on what has been referred to as the golden era of the Sinophonic film industry. The work reimagines history by collapsing fact and fiction together, using found footage from a range of existing films, from Cathay-Keris movies to documentaries of wartime Malaya.

After Paradise Lost #1 is rendered in the Batuan style of painting, which is characterised by dense compositions teeming with figures, spaces and incidents. This series engages with Balinese painting, and its relation to the history and development of modern art in Indonesia. Yasa has depicted not only the bustle of everyday life on the island, but also included his own versions of famous paintings from Western and Indonesian art history.

Phan Thao Nguyen's work is based on her research into the life and work of French Jesuit missionary, Alexandre de Rhodes, who is considered the father of the Romanised Vietnamese script that is still in use today. Tropical Siesta tells an imaginary tale of rural Vietnam, informed by de Rhodes' colourful observations as he travelled through the country in the 17th century.

Written in the Margins represents the first complete portion of Shubigi Rao's ongoing project, Pulp: A Short Biography of the Banished Book. Pulp examines issues surrounding the destruction of books and libraries, and its first volume sees Rao interviewing individuals and researching sites in Europe connected to current-day manifestations of the phenomenon.

Ex Nilalang is a video trilogy that draws upon the artists' personal experiences as Filipino-Australians to complicate notions of cultural and gender identity, by reimagining mythological tales.

Republic of Rubber Tape is presented as a structure that recalls the artist’s childhood home: Kampong Ayer, or water village, in Bandar Sri Begawan, Brunei. The artist remarks, “Here, the borderline created by the length of the rubber tape refers to a realm that only exists when it is recognised by others. The wooden structure is an evocation of my childhood, spent in a land far away from my present home."

AK-47 vs. M16 was inspired by the collision and fusion of two bullets on an American Civil War battlefield; a phenomenon that statistically has the probability of one in a billion. The Propeller Group recreated this singular occurrence, capturing the impact of the moment when two bullets – one from an AK-47, which was invented by the Soviets, and the other from a M16, the brainchild of the U.S. army – meet.

Kaokao #1 is a sweeping installation created using high-visibility tape, which draws on the Māori heritage of the Mata Aho Collective. While the chevron is most often understood as a military symbol, for the Māori, the kaokao is commonly attributed to a warrior’s strength. It also features on birthing mats, signifying new life and growth.

Enfolded within Yuichiro Tamura’s installation, Milky Bay, are subtle references to various episodes of post-war history in which bodies and the male physique feature prominently. Foremost among these is the story of Yukio Mishima, considered one of the most important Japanese authors of the 20th century.

Twenty different species of fauna, depicted in a state of dreaming sleep, make up Jitish Kallat’s The Infinite Episode. The work portrays an animalian utopia: the creatures, despite real-life divergences, are here represented approximately equal in size. They share not simply a physical space, but a state of being - sleep - wherein physical scale has been made irrelevant. Kallat’s work, through an affirmation of likeness and fleeting togetherness, provokes broader deliberations on human coexistence, hierarchy and inequity.

Thasnai Sethaseree’s massive artwork is a vibrant, tactile collage upon a canvas of layered Thai Buddhist monks’ robes, that enfolds into its surface sheets of newspapers, images of modern architecture and political violence in Thailand, as well as printed texts of the new Thai Constitution and the 17th-century poem, Prophetic Lament for Sri Ayutthaya. Underlying the celebratory hues, however, are subtle references to the socio-political turmoil that Thailand has experienced in recent years. Laid over these various textures are strands of brightly-coloured Lanna paper streamers, rendered in the region’s traditional paper cutting technique.

This work comprises a series of monumental photographic portraits, the faces of their subjects hidden from view. Leung Chi Wo + Sara Wong portray unidentifiable figures in this suite of staged photographs that are based on selections from their collection of newspapers, magazines, brochures and other printed material; these published sources form a companion body of work, Museum of the Lost. Leung and Wong’s re-enactments of these characters interrogates historical representation. The image is a testament to their existence. They believe that anyone who has been photographed has occupied a place in the past, no matter how minor their role.

Mud man tells the story of a community visited by bird droppings that resemble clumps of mud falling from the sky. These droppings awaken the slumbering people, who pick the clumps up to listen to voices emanating from within, and speaking of history, nature, and other communities. The video was shot in both Okinawa and Jeju Island in South Korea; the two share many geographical and historical affinities.